Thursday, September 28, 2006
[RealEdge] BT : Tong Eng bags 2 sites for $2.5m at auction
| Published September 28, 2006  | |||
| Tong Eng bags 2 sites for $2.5m at auction FEATURE Land, a member of the Tong Eng Group, yesterday snapped up two adjoining freehold sites in Sixth Avenue for $2.5 million at a Colliers International auction where three other properties - including a freehold walk-up maisonette at Tanglin Hill Condominium that fetched $2.5 million - were also sold. The 7,565 sq ft site bought by Feature Land was put up for auction by the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) to recover unpaid property taxes. And IRAS said yesterday it may put another two lots of property on the auction block later this year for the same reason. One is a pre-war terrace house at 27 Onan Road, for which IRAS has been owed $12,832 in property tax since 1997. The other comprises two pre-war houses at 19 and 21 Emerald Hill, for which the taxman is owed $25,212 in tax for the period July 2002 to December 2006. In both cases, IRAS has not been paid tax despite numerous attempts to collect it. On the Sixth Avenue site, Feature Land plans to build a pair of semi-detached houses it hopes to sell for about $2.5 million to $2.6 million each. The property was sold after six bids. But the most hotly-contested property at yesterday's auction was a walk-up maisonette at Tanglin Hill Condominium at 11A Tanglin Rise. Bidding started at $1.7 million and raced up before the property was knocked down at $2.5 million. The unit attracted 16 bids in total and was picked up by a foreigner. BT understands that a similar unit in the development changed hands for $1.665 million in March this year. 'In fact, similar-size units in the development were going for around $2.38 million in 1995, so the price for the latest deal has surpassed prices during the market peak,' a source told BT. On selling or auctioning properties to recover outstanding tax, an IRAS spokeswoman stressed yesterday that the authority only does this as a last resort. The same applies to property tax on HDB flats, although these make up a very small part of total property tax collections. 'We issue reminders, notices to pay, make phone calls and appoint banks as agents to try to recover the taxes due,' the spokeswoman said in a statement. 'We even visit the owners with the objective of helping them settle their taxes. It is only when all such attempts fail to get the taxes settled that we would resort to recovering outstanding property tax through the sale/auction of property.' IRAS said total property tax arrears have hovered around 5 per cent of the total property tax collection and 0.4 per cent of total collections of all tax types for the past few years. 'The tax arrears attributable to HDB cases are not large since HDB property tax accounts for about 3.4 per cent of the property tax assessed,' it said. | |||
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